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    Category Physics

    New Type of Solar Cell is being tested in Space

    February 1, 2023, Categories  Physics

    New type of solar cell is being tested in space
    Nanowires in three materials imaged by a scanning electron microscope. A thread is a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair. The red and blue colour shows the direction of the current, and that the nanowires work as a tandem solar cell. Credit: Lund University

    Physics researchers at Lund University in Sweden recently succeeded in constructing small solar radiation-collecting antennas—nanowires—using three different materials that are a better match for the solar spectrum compared with today’s silicon solar cells. As the nanowires are light and require little material per unit of area, they are now to be installed for tests on satellites, which are powered by solar cells and where efficiency, in combination with low weight, is the most important factor...

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    Superconductivity Switches On and Off in ‘Magic-Angle’ Gaphene

    January 31, 2023, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    A unique device is made of sandwiched layers, with yellow and purple on top and blue on bottom. The middle layer is dark grey representing 2 layers of graphene, and the inset shows the graphene layers creating a moiré pattern. The device has a central rectangular shape with 7 more rectangular shapes emanating from it.
    Caption:MIT physicists have found a new way to switch superconductivity on and off in magic-angle graphene. This figure shows a device with two graphene layers in the middle (in dark gray and in inset). The graphene layers are sandwiched in between boron nitride layers (in blue and purple). The angle and alignment of each layer enables the researchers to turn superconductivity on and off in graphene with a short electric pulse.
    Credits:Credit: Courtesy of the researchers. Edited by MIT News.

    A quick electric pulse completely flips the material’s electronic properties, opening a route to ultrafast, brain-inspired, superconducting electronics...

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    Will Machine Learning help us find Extraterrestrial Life?

    January 31, 2023, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Will machine learning help us find extraterrestrial life?
    Examples showing the four types of training data. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01872-z

    Researchers have applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of interest.

    When pondering the probability of discovering technologically advanced extraterrestrial life, the question that often arises is, “if they’re out there, why haven’t we found them yet?” And often, the response is that we have only searched a tiny portion of the galaxy. Further, algorithms developed decades ago for the earliest digital computers can be outdated and inefficient when applied to modern petabyte-scale datasets...

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    Scalable Method to Manufacture Thin Film Transistors achieves Ultraclean Interface

    January 31, 2023, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Scalable method to manufacture thin film transistors achieves ultra-clean interface for high performance, low-voltage device ope
    Microchip containing thin film transistors having record sub-threshold slope, made using the in situ atomic layer deposition process. Credit: Silvia Cardarelli, Michigan ECE

    Prof. Becky Peterson at the University of Michigan leads a team that has developed a scalable, manufacturable method for developing thin film transistors (TFTs) that operate at the lowest possible voltage. This is particularly important for TFT integration with today’s silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductors (CMOS), which are used in the vast majority of integrated circuits.

    “We’re essentially developing a less complicated device that operates at lower voltage,” said ECE Ph.D. student Tonglin (Tanya) Newsom, who is first author on the paper...

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